1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wheelchair. More particularly, the present invention relates to an assisted wheelchair having a driving wheel.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Conventionally, there are two types of assisted wheelchairs having a driving wheel. One type thereof is a manually-operated assisted wheelchair having a handle for transmitting the human driving force generated by pushing or pulling operation of an assistant to a driving wheel to propel the main body, the wheelchair being intended to be run by the human power of the assistant. The other type is an electrically-operated assisted wheelchair having a driving motor, a decelerator, and a battery for power supply, the wheelchair being intended to be run electrically by the motor.
The manually-operated assisted wheelchair is a wheelchair run by rotation of a driving wheel generated by the assistant's operation of a handle with a hand. Therefore, it is necessary to employ a labor of operating the handle, so that the assistant is liable to get tired when one wants to go for a long distance or when the wheelchair is used on an upward slope, thus rendering the use thereof difficult.
On the other hand, the electrically-operated wheelchair is considerably heavy and large-sized because of a large capacity battery which the wheelchair carries, so that it has been extremely difficult to load the wheelchair on an automobile or a truck. Also, since the turning radius is large contrary to the manually-operated assisted wheelchair, the electrically-operated assisted wheelchair cannot turn in a small circle, so that the use in a small space such as in a room has been restricted.
The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances and the main purpose thereof is to provide a comparatively less heavy and small-sized assisted wheelchair that does not need so much manual labor of the assistant's handle operation.